Iluvatar's top ten

[MikeWaters]

Iluvatar, I take it you haven't read Bushman's book?

Otherwise, you would know that there are different ideas of what "translation" meant to Joseph Smith.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Iluvatar

Alright, I'll bite. Let's discuss the book of Abraham a little further, eh?

Let me preface this by stating for the record that I'm not a troll. I'm not trying to stir anbody up. I'm not picking a fight. I'm not out to bash the church, destroy your testimonies or steal your babies to sacrifice on the alters of the priests of Baal.

If it appears that I'm playing devil's advocate; that's because I am. Someday we'll discuss the finer points of the word of wisdom, the law of chastity or the church's policy on dating. I'm sure we'll all be in complete agreement then. This, however, is not that discussion.

Allow me to revisit some essential aspects of the Book of Abraham story (more for me than you).

1) The church purchased a set of scrolls that JS claimed were the lost teachings of the prophet Abraham, written "by his own hand upon Papyrus." He also claimed that another scroll, purchased at the same time, contained the teachings of the prophet Joseph in Egypt.

2) JS claims to have translated the Abraham scroll by means of divine gift/power.

3) These scrolls were thought lost in the Chicago fire. Making scholarly examination impossible.

4) In 1966, many fragments of these lost scrolls were found in the NY Metropolitan Meseum of Art in 1966 (sorry, I originally said it was 1967).

5) When they were finally translated by secular means, they were shown to be common funerary scrolls for a man named Hor.

Mormon apologists argue that the recovered scrolls were not the ones used in JS's translation. I belive they are wrong. Here's why.

Found with the scroll fragments was a bill of sale, signed By Emma Smith (Bidamin). Experts all agree that it was indeed her handwriting. This alone would link it conclusively to the prophet. But that's not all. There were maps of the temple grounds at Kirkland drawn on the back of the piece of parchment that Joseph used to repair a piece of scroll fragment.

Moreover the fragment used to construct facsimile #1 WAS indeed found. There is no arguing this point. JS had glued it to a seperate sheet of parchment and attempted, rather clumsily, to recreate the missing portions of the fragment. This is very important, because facsimile #1 was an integral part of the story found in The Book of Abraham.

Read Abraham, 1:12-15. These versess were taken directly from JS's translation of facsimile #1. So we can say quite confidently that at least part of the translation came from the "Book of the Breathing" scrolls that were recovered in 1966.

Moreover, there was a fragment that JS had removed from the Facsimile #1 fragment. This fragment was given the name "little Senen", and it was covered with a series of heiratics thatappeared to be unrelated to the translation at the time of their rediscovery. Several years later, however, a discovery was made int the archives of the church called JS's egyptian alphabet and grammar (or something to that effect). Historians and scholars quickly determied that the Alphabet and grammar were taken directly (and in precisely the same order) from the "Little Sensen" fragment. Again, nearly nirrefutible proof that JS used the "Book of the Breathings" to translate the Book of Abraham.

There are other far flung theories out there, and I'd be happy to discuss any # of them.

What say you?

In a court of law, it would be admissible.

And I can see why it is believed the Church possessed those documents. However, why one believes these are the sole documents used is my main observation.

Did the Church ever specify how many documents were included?

You stated "fragments" were apparently recovered. This doesn't exclude by any means the logical possibility that others were the source of "translation". I don't know what Joseph meant by translation and what he used. However, nothing you've stated meets a very high standard of proof.

It is interesting information, which I read long ago. Why do you believe its conclusive proof?

[Archaea]

Without intending to insult, as a lawyer and a once upon time scientist, that is far from irrefutable evidence. It is suggestive to be sure. It seems Joseph possessed the Book of Breathings, or funeral rites of the Egyptian.

However, to be irrefutable, one would need firsthand testimony, photos, recordings and many other instrumental recordings to produce irrefutable evidence.

Basically, one must believe that after 130 years, fragmentary evidence produces "irrefutable" evidence of the methodology and "sole" documents ever in possession of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

I'm not certain I'd lose my testimony over such scant evidence. It does make me curious as to what Joseph Smith got his hands on back then. Apparently, the nineteenth century was an era of Egyptian discovery, when heirlooms and documents were raided and floated much more often than they do now.

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by Iluvatar

Mormon apologists argue that the recovered scrolls were not the ones used in JS's translation. I belive they are wrong. Here's why.

Found with the scroll fragments was a bill of sale, signed By Emma Smith (Bidamin). Experts all agree that it was indeed her handwriting. This alone would link it conclusively to the prophet. But that's not all. There were maps of the temple grounds at Kirkland drawn on the back of the piece of parchment that Joseph used to repair a piece of scroll fragment.

I don't think that the fact that the recovered scrolls were at one time owned by Joseph is in dispute. What is in dispute is whether or not the portion of the scroll(s) he used to get the text of the Book of Abraham were recovered.

Originally Posted by Iluvatar

Moreover the fragment used to construct facsimile #1 WAS indeed found. There is no arguing this point. JS had glued it to a seperate sheet of parchment and attempted, rather clumsily, to recreate the missing portions of the fragment. This is very important, because facsimile #1 was an integral part of the story found in The Book of Abraham.

Nobody disputes that facsimile #1 was recovered. I think that what is disputed is how the facsimilies relate to the Book of Abraham text. Or in other words, does the fact that the post Rosetta Stone (I use this term because I assume that when Joseph "translated" the papyri there were very few people on earth who were able to read heiroglyphics even though the RS was discovered prior to Joseph's time) translations of the facsimiles appear to show that Josephs interpretations were incorrect necessarily mean that the translation of the text of the Book of Abraham would also be incorrect. Here is an excerpt from a book called A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri written by John Gee. Yes, it is a FARMS book (very cool photos of recovered scrolls and nice history lesson, no longer in print).

"Several theories posit ways in which the Book of Abraham text relates to the papyri. These may be categorized as the Kirtland Egyptian Papers theory, the missing papyrus theory, and the pure revelation theory.

Some people, both Mormon and non-Mormon, believe that Joseph Smith used the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (sometimes mistakenly called the Alphabet and Grammar) to produce the Book of Abraham from the papyri. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers were a group of miscellaneous documents primarily in the handwriting of several men who served at various times as Joseph Smith's scribes, and these documents were produced in Kirtland or Nauvoo. Three of the documents from the Kirtland Egyptian Papers contain a partial copy of the tranlsated Book of Abraham in which a word or two in Egyptian characters is written in the left-hand margin at the beginning of each paragraph of English text. According to this theory, the text to the right is the translation of the Egyptian characters to the left. Unfortuanately for this theory, the Egyptian characters were added after the entire English text was written (as evidenced by the use of different inks, Egyptian characters that do not always line up with the English text, and Egyptian characters that sometimes overrun the English text). Thus it was not a matter of writing the character and then writing the translation but of someone later adding the characters in the margin at the beginning of paragraphs of text without explicitly stating the reason for doing so.

Advocates of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers theory also assume that Joseph Smith first compiled a grammar from which he then produced the translation. But when a text in an unknown language is initially translated, a decipherer usually cracks the language without the use of grammars. Grammarians then go through the translation, establish the grammatical usage, and compile a grammar. Later, individuals learn the grammar and then produce translations. As a decipherer and one who had never formally studied any grammar at the time he produced the translation, Joseph Smith would have done the translation first.

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers that have been connected with the papyri appear to be a later attempt to match up the tranlation of the Book of Abraham with some of the Egyptian characters. If one assumes that the Book of Abraham was the second text on the papyrus of Hor, a possible scenario is that having the translation of the Book of Abraham, the brethren at Kirtland tried to match the Egyptian characters with the translation but chose the characters from the first text. Yet it is not certain that this is what they thought they were doing.

Some have reasoned that since the preserved papyri account for no more than 13 percent of all the papyri that Joseph Smith possessed, the Book of Abraham does not match the translation of the preserved papyri because it was most likely translated from a portion of the papyri that is now missing. Any theory such as this one that has Joseph Smith translating an authentic ancient text assumes that he did so by divine inspiration.

Others have thought that the Book of Abraham was not connected in any way with the papyri but was received by pure inspiration. mormons and non-Mormons who hold this theory differ as to the source of that inspiration."